White House political office will remain

President-elect Barack Obama has answered bipartisan calls for the disbandment of the White House office central to the Karl Rove-style politics the Democrat condemned as a candidate. The office stays.

Patrick Gaspard, a New Yorker and longtime labor operative, will head the Office of Political Affairs, the Obama transition announced on Friday.

Story Continued Below

Gaspard was national political director for the Obama campaign and has been an associate director for personnel for the transition.

The office he will oversee has been strongly denounced by some Republicans and Democrats, including Obama's former opponent Sen. John McCain, who vowed to abolish the office if he were elected, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who issued a report last month recommending its elimination.

Obama had remained largely silent on the office's future in his administration – both during the campaign and in the first few weeks of transition.

An Obama transition spokeswoman said that keeping the office open does not mean the president-elect will default on his campaign promise to change politics-as-usual in Washington, which as a candidate he dubbed the "perpetual campaign."

"An Obama White House will be focused on meeting the next challenge, not winning the next election," transition spokeswoman Jen Psaki wrote in an e-mail Friday evening. "That is what he promised in the campaign and that is how he will govern."

The Office of Political Affairs was created by President Ronald Reagan. And while it has been criticized for as long, it has also been staffed by every president since.

Opponents of the office argue that a partisan political office has no business being in the White House.

“It’s not an office that should be subsidized by taxpayers, and it should not be part of the White House itself,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist with the government watchdog group Public Citizen. The office has no benefit for the public, he said.

It’s a move Republicans will seize upon. “Many voters will be disappointed that Barack Obama is doing nothing to make his White House less political,” Republican National Committee spokesman, Alex Conant, wrote in an e-mail responding to Gaspard’s appointment.

But others, particularly those who’ve served in previous presidential administrations, have defended the office, saying the nation’s chief executive needs someone in the White House to give him a sense of the political impact of policies and legislation.